Lem a New England village boy Author:Noah Brooks Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HIS FAMILY AND HIS HOME The Parker house was an old-fashioned square building with a roof that was so steep that it gave space for several room... more »s in the attic, and those garret rooms were the joy and pride of the family. They were the playrooms for the children, and the storerooms for the grown people. Two big chimneys went up through that garret, and these were so contrived that one could walk around the chimney which came up at the north end of the house; and at the south end of the house the chimney was built against the wall in such a way that a broad and deep recess was formed in one corner where the sun lay long in the daytime. Below, a wide hall, called the entry, ran through the house from the front to the back, with a door at each end. And there was a portico on the front end and a porch at the back. The windows in the front rooms were so deep that there was space in each of them for a pretty wide seat, and when Lem had a book that he loved to look at, he used to curl up in one of those window-seats, pull the heavy curtains together, and he was safelyshut away from the rest of the family for a while. At the back of the house and opening from the kitchen and wash-room (commonly called the sink- room), was the storeroom in which were kept a vast number of things, some of them very dear to the hearts of the smaller children, such as doughnuts, cake, preserves, fruit, and pies. There was an odor in that delightful room that no child ever forgot. It was a mingled smell of spices, sweets, and fruits. Along one side of the storeroom were ranged three bins, with tops that lifted up and served for covers. One of these was for corn-meal, another for flour, and a third for rye-meal. From two of these bins came the materials, every Saturday, for the brown bread...« less